Expats living on the beach in Nicaragua

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So after 5 years we finally sold our first house and have moved on the the second one, hopefully this time will go much better since we should have learned from our last mistakes, plus we have the money to do the upgrades from the sale of the last house. The first time we had to wait and save to do improvements so this should go faster.

Now when I say we have moved into our new house I am not saying we should have or that it was habitable, just that we did. There is currently no kitchen, I have a cooktop and a microwave and a fridge, I wash dishes outside in a bucket, or the smaller ones in the bathroom sink, we have one working bathroom out of 4 and in that one the toilet leaks. The majority of the main room is more hardware store than house, that is were we store all the building materials we have had delivered for the house, all the cement, metal tubing, wire, wood for the kitchen cabinets, even the new kitchen sink. Moving around in the main room is almost like an episode of hoarders, only all this stuff will be used soon. We also have all our furniture in random areas with a clear path out the back door so the workers can get the cement bags and other materials out without having to move furniture, everything is up against the walls right now.

About 2 weeks after we moved in….hello tropical storm Nate, he didn’t do much damage to the house but there was a row of driftwood and other debris that washed up on the beach about 2 feet high and 3 feet wide, oh, and the power and water were out for 5 days, the water because we have not yet gotten the water tower installed and the water tank was sitting on the ground so no power = no pump and with the tank on the ground no chance of gravity fed water, oh fun times. We were able to scoop water out of the pilla in 5 gallon buckets to take showers, flush the toilets and wash dishes. We lost everything in the fridge but we were able to save everything in the freezer by buying bags of ice and transferring it to a cooler. We even had neighbors coming by with small bags wanting to buy ice from us.

If this was not enough of a test one of our dogs developed a “hot spot”, where they fixate on one part of their body and lick and bite it until the hair is gone and it is just an ugly raw spot, unfortunately it was the crazy dog so taking her to the vet requires two people, one to drive and one to prevent her from jumping in the drivers lap, or getting under his feet or jumping out a window. I almost asked the vet to sedate her for the ride home. He was trying to sell us a muzzle to keep her from licking the area and I had a hard time explaining in spanish that we had one of those large plastic collars already and we didn’t need the muzzle, finally with hand signals he realized what I was saying and smiled. We brought that dang thing down with us from the states because every time we have ever thrown one away we needed it within a month. We almost threw it away when we moved, so glad we didn’t.

It has been a trying time to say the least but as with everything else, this too will pass, at some point there will be a working kitchen sink, toilets that don’t leak and the living room will be cleared of all construction material, but until then the adventure continues.